smile some sunshine down my way
Looking to juice up your summer drinks game? Skip to the recipes below by clicking here, or read on for a more circuitous route through fascinating musing about the weather and polyvagal theory.
Despite some overreaching days in April that were JUST TOO HOT, we had something like a proper, spring-like spring here in Western MA. I approve of this, which I am sure comes as a great relief to the weather. When cool temperatures and plentiful rain conspire with days of non-blistering sunshine to extend the bloom season for all my top draft picks, I can almost forget that the lovely explosion of color and perfume is also the season where you can get three bloodhungry ticks up in your business just strolling down to check the mail.
Sometimes spring is two weeks of icy mud followed by two days of thaw followed by the tropical heat of summer (the troubling variant we have experienced in recent years), but when it isn’t I can really throw myself into enjoyment of the jaw-dropping majesty of the weeping cherries and lusciously extravagant magnolias and ridiculously sculptural dogwoods and get myself really grounded in beauty. I can stand under the riot of the apple tree, inhaling the scent and the pinkness and getting almost as high (admittedly, this is a guesstimate) as the unruly mob of drunken bees, and feel a little hopeful that there will be apples and a future in which we get to pick them. In a cool, wet spring, the bloom period goes on and on in the best, slowest and most technicolor way.
I like the day when I notice that greenness has started creeping into the landscape, then the days that follow when I can track its gains like I’m living in some transitionally colorized movie, and finally the day when I realize I can’t remember what the grey and brown of winter (which I secretly adore, so no shade to it whatsoever) look like, because green has become the coin of the realm. It’s never long after that until I can ditch tired supermarket lettuce and waddle around the yard, filling my shirt-apron with edible bits and pieces and making something like this, whose composition changes as I learn more about which parts of the yard I can eat, and as different plants leaf out and become nibble-able.
I’m a lifelong fan of grazing, but lately I am especially hungry for the beauty all these little plant friends provide. The pounding awareness that we’ve colluded against ourselves, that we’ve collectively built and signed onto systems that work against our joy and survival, is relentless. I can’t sleep from it, and I don’t know what to do with the volume of feelings it produces. We are not wired to absorb, contain or find a foothold in the torrent of information flooding inescapably into our pockets and minds, indelible images and mounting data about what’s devastating people and nature around the globe. It’s too much amperage for old wiring. How can we bear to look at it? How can we dare to look away? What’s our individual role, when the systems have been designed to serve themselves, check themselves and drown us out?
It’s a constant cogitation. I’m calling and writing and donating, working for justice in all the ways I’ve learned to, but what’s a right relationship to have to little sustaining pleasures and kindnesses when basic freedoms and needs and very existence is being violently obliterated for so many and we can watch in real time? The dissonance I experience from these wrecking images and accounts, and from how they are interrupted by ads for products the Great Eyeball has decided to market my way, is physical. Here are parents pulling their baby from the rubble. Kick/ball/change: this pan is naturally nonstick! Here’s a bombed NICU, here is a decimating breakdown of how scattered movement work undercuts the possibility of change and HERE, my friend, is a screaming deal on moisturizer.
Art by David Schmitt aka Tuyo
How do we connect to what roots and restores us? That’s a real question. I’m not sneaking in a riddle here that I know the answer to. Over decades of service work I’ve been lovingly chided with so many versions of the ‘can’t pour from an empty cup’ narrative, and I’ve internalized most of them. I think. But I’m after a little something else here, not the permission to replenish but some type of mental tool to place these things in a human context.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and exploring of the notion of co-regulation. That’s what’s working for me as much as anything is. If it has been a while since you took a developmental psych class, the first place we learn (or don’t) to co-regulate is as an infant with our primary caregivers, who are in place not just to meet our physical needs but to reassure us that distress is transitory. Some of us get to keep up the study later, repairing or replacing or just reconnecting to that early education. But we also co-regulate when we call a calmer friend to talk us off a ledge of one kind or another, because when our amped energy is met by their chill, it settles. I had a yoga teacher who would close each class with the reminder that opting for self-care is world care, a kind of keeping your side of the street clean that net-benefits the whole human race. I heard about a guy who believed every sound that’s ever been made still resonates in some layer of the universe, and all we lack is the right instrument to pick it up. Did you know that monks hum not just because it is fun to do and pairs nicely with their haircuts, but because it vibrates the vagus nerve, which helps to regulate DRAMMMMA in our systems?
It all seems related.
Also, we all have to hydrate.
the drinks
Making delicious things to drink is a really easy thing to do and a really easy way to harness plant medicine, plant energy and plant beauty in your life. You don’t need to have access to free-range flowers to do it, either. The bulk dried herbs section of your local natural foode shoppe is a big ally, as is the produce section of the market, as are any of the fantabulous tea-makers that abound. Tall jars of these infusions are always in the fridge here—putting them together is a really welcome meditation with bountiful rewards.
Basic staples of my blending pantry:
Dried nettle (mineral rich and very nutritious)
Dried oatstraw (super hydrator)
Dried peppermint (the most refreshing and restorative hot-weather quaff)
A mild green tea (full of antioxidants and flavor-friendly)
A neutral honey
Lemon juice in large amounts
Something floral like rosewater or rose elixir (get in Miss Polly’s good graces!)
or orange flower water or this lil meatball.
Equipment:
A half gallon mason jar
A gizmo like this.
Shopping for tea blends or bulk herbs?
My Cup of Tea has delicious ready to go blends and provides fair-wage jobs at their teahouse to help women overcome poverty and sustain themselves and their families.
Adagio offers some outrageous mixtures that lend themselves nicely to mixology and are also delicious straight. My favorites are white peach, white grapefruit and lychee rose green.
Here is a source for high quality dried herbs like nettle, oatstraw, clover, peppermint, etc. Please always check your sources for anything, but especially plants, for sensitivity to land stewardship both environmentally and culturally.
Fill your infuser gizmo with the dried herbs or tea mix, settle it in the jar and add 1/4-1/3 c honey, then fill the jar with hot hot water. Adding the honey to the infuser saves you from having to stir it later. I’ve whoops-too-late discovered mason jars had flaws enough times that I always brew with the jar in the sink, where they can’t fill my socks with tea in the rare but statistically real event that they crack.
Let it stand 3-4 minutes, then remove the infuser. Let cool, then add 1/4 cup lemon juice and any floral enhancers you want to play with. We like sweet and tart to really duke it out here, but you can play with the balance that works for you. Cap and chill.
Want to take it to the next level?
This is a stupendous time of year to get your mitts on fresh lilacs (broad leaf common lilac, not the late-blooming Korean variety, which has smaller leaves), roses, clover, dandelions, violas, fresh mint, fresh basil, verbena, etc.
You can make a water infusion (aka tea) of any of these fresh plants (cold brew methods are better than hot water to preserve their magical flavor) right in your jar as above, or use the recipes below to capture their aromatic essence for longer-term storage and use.
Things to remember if you are picking vs purchasing fresh plant materials:
Know the plant you are looking to partner with is generally recognized as safe (GRAS)—start here for a basic list.
Know the plant you are picking is the plant you came in search of. Essential for safety! Doesn’t matter what the list says if you are picking something else.
Know with all the certainty you can muster that the area you are harvesting from is free of pesticides, etc and not in a high vehicle exhaust location.
Never take everything, Leave some for the bees.
Lilac syrup
Simple Syrup Infusion
3/4 c sugar
1 c water
2-3c fresh blossoms, shaken well to evict any critters
optionally, a teaspoon of finely-grated lemon or lime zest
a quart jar, and lid, that have been washed with hot soapy water
A capped storage bottle or jar that has also been cleaned well.
Bring sugar and water to boil and let cool. Quell impatience! It’s essential to cool it down to get the freshest flavor! Cooked flowers taste like…cooked flowers.
Pack a sterile jar with fresh blossoms. To get the most floral flavor, pluck blossoms from stems, stamens, etc as thoroughly as you have patience for. Cover with the cooled syrup. For maximum bounce to the ounce, once the first batch of blossoms has infused a couple hours and looks spent, pack another few handfuls on top. Repeat again, if supplies and patience warrant. Leave to stand overnight, then strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a sterilized bottle and refrigerate.
Honey Infusion
Use a mild honey in place of the sugar solution. Tasted straight, I worried the honey had overwhelmed the flowers but once added to an herbal tea to sweeten, the flower elements really jumped out. Magical!
Ways to use both:
Take a splash on the rocks with seltzer and a twist or wedge of lime, or make a cocktail if you swing that way.
Use it to sweeten an herbal or green tea infusion. Blew my own little mind by simmering a few stalks of chopped rhubarb in water until it turned pink, then sweetening with the lilac honey. That’s some downright fairy-level activity right there.
Cheers! Love your people and speak up.
